One by one, things that Norm and his Japanese American family took for granted are taken away. In a matter of months they, along with everyone else of Japanese ancestry living on the West Coast, are forced by the government to move to internment camps, leaving everything they have known behind. At the Heart Mountain internment camp in Wyoming, Norm and his family live in one room in a tar paper barracks with no running water. There are lines for the communal bathroom and lines for the mess hall, and they live behind barbed wire and under the scrutiny of armed guards in watchtowers. Meticulously researched and informed by extensive interviews with Norm Mineta himself, this narrative sheds light on a little-known subject of American history. Andrea Warren covers the history of early Asian immigration to the United States and provides historical context for the U.S. government’s decision to imprison Japanese Americans alongside a deeply personal account of the sobering effects of that policy.
